


take me to your level

by seventeencrows



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/F, could have come in handy later, pre everything, pre hephaestus, the author warns you that things you may have forgotten while drinking, the surgeon general warns you that drinking heavily may impair your memory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 15:13:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12323547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeencrows/pseuds/seventeencrows
Summary: She knows she's heard that name before.





	take me to your level

**Author's Note:**

> _we stayed up in the city / until the stars lost the war / so friday night, holy ghost / take me to your level / show me the one I need the most_

She's drunk. It doesn't happen very often, which is why she knows it’s happening in the first place, but it’s new, _fun._ She's pleasantly buzzed, really—nothing too bad, she can _so_ remember her name and the time of her flight tomorrow and the name of the place that she's sitting in. Right? The bar (club?) is called Steve’s (or was it Pete’s? there’s a couple e’s in there somewhere for sure) and she’s on her third (?) vodka tonic. Well, maybe it’s a gin and tonic, but it’s _definitely_ got tonic water in it, so—

Okay. Maybe she's had a little more to drink than she originally thought.

Renée Minkowski is off to Paris in the morning and being right here right now is the _worst_ idea she’s ever had—but then again, she’s got a half-finished application for NASA waiting for her in her suitcase so maybe _that’s_ the worst idea, in which case this is only second-bad and therefore not that worst at all.

That makes sense, doesn’t it?

She’s been nursing the same drink for a good twenty minutes and considering going home when someone laughs right next to her ear, loud and brash and sounding, frankly, like they’re having a _significantly_ better time than she is. Renée, being a competent military officer with the nerves of steel required to pilot through all wear and weather, doesn’t jump (....a lot; look, okay, it was a little startling but she didn’t jump _that much)_ and turns in her seat to calmly ask the loudmouth to _shut right the hell up._

However, also—Renée, being a woman with the alcohol tolerance of the sort of small woodland creature that animated movie franchises revolve around, spins around a little too enthusiastically, loses her balance, and tilts toward the floor.

She has, she comes to understand on the way down, had _way more_ to drink than she originally thought.

And then there are hands, solid and steady and bracing against her back and hip, and Renée’s tête-à-tête with gravity gets postponed by a woman who looks just as surprised to be holding her as Renée is to be held. The lights from the dance floor flash and move and skate across a face that had been caught mid-laugh as Renée tilts her her head back dizzyingly to figure out exactly how embarrassed she needs to be. Her stranger’s got a flush high on her cheeks and a wry smile curling across her lips and she tucks a lock of Renée’s hair behind her ear as she takes her weight, easing her the rest of the way off the bar stool and turning her upright. She waits until she’s certain Renée’s not going to lose her lunch before she asks, “You alright there?”

“I’m not drunk,” Renée blurts, surly and ungrateful. She wobbles on her feet as she straightens.

There’s glitter on the curve of her neck when she arches an eyebrow and tilts her head at Renée. (Renée only sees it because the lights are bright, okay, she’s not _staring.)_ “I didn’t say you were.”

“You—That’s—” The people with Renée’s serendipitous savior elbow each other in the ribs with crescent-moon grins and hastily make their retreat back into the crowd, and Renée feels like she can be a rational, reasonable, _relatively sober_ person without the added audience cackling like jackals in the background. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I’m being rude and you were just trying to help, and I—” her tongue’s running ahead of her now and she doesn’t like it; it hasn’t done that since she was ten, eleven, since she was scraping the accent away, sidestepping her heritage. “What I’m trying to say is thanks, um—?”    

“Isabel,” says, well, Isabel, but frowns like she’s not entirely comfortable with how her name sits in her mouth. (Renée still pauses when someone calls her anything but _Minkowski;_ the bar’s not even a mile away from the base and she wonders if she’s just embarrassed herself in front of another officer—another lieutenant, or worse, a _captain—)_ “Isabel Lovelace.”

“Renée,” she replies, but leaves it at that. Her name’s hard enough to pronounce without a pounding bass under it and besides, she’s going to do great things. Everyone will know her name soon enough.

Isabel nods, steps back to let her go and move away and then, suddenly, _stops._ She looks Renée over with a light in her eyes like she’s having a _terrible_ idea (and Renée’s not having a bad idea of her own, not staring at her face, at the curve of her jaw or the arch of her cheekbone or the way she bites her lip and her teeth glow against the bar lights—but she thinks this girl gets bad ideas often) and asks Renée if she wants to dance.

At least, that’s what Renée _thinks_ she asked—the music’s loud and the lights are pulsing and _besides_ that, asking her? to dance? _“What?”_

Isabel smiles, slow and sweet and that light in her eyes shifts as her hands do. Her grip on Renée’s hip tightens, fingers slide under her shirt to tap against bare skin and she leans _so_ much closer than she needs to, lips right against Renée’s ear as she murmurs, “Do you want to dance?”

Oh.

This—

This is a _terrible idea,_ but Renée squares her shoulders, every inch the lieutenant, the up and coming _astronaut,_ and shifts to stand firmer in Isabel’s grip. The rest of her life starts tomorrow, but tonight? Tonight, she’s going to have some fun if it _kills_ her. “Absolutely.”

It’s nearly blinding in the glow of the backlit bar and whatever it is that lights this girl up from the inside out, but the grin she fixes on Renée is mesmerizing, almost enough to distract her from the hand sliding further under her shirt and the other one closing around her wrist, pulling her away from her seat and onto the floor. The music is so much louder here, in the crush and sway of all these people but they don’t even matter, not when there’s arms around her neck and the slow grind of hips against hers and the music is thrumming through her bones.

She’s not the best dancer even sober and neither, she learns, is Isabel, but they stumble and giggle their way into a rhythm that fits both the beat shaking the floor under them and the way they slot together. Isabel pulls all the air in the room to her; she’s got a star squared away under her skin, she _blazes_ with it, turns that meteor gaze on Renée and she’s surprised she doesn’t burn right up. Isabel laughs when she twirls, dips her—she keeps glancing over her shoulder like she’s watching, waiting, like she’s on the run from something (someone?), like Renée is her great new secret at least for tonight, at least until she (they?) get caught. Like them, here, is breaking the rules.

Renée kisses her first—doesn’t even care that they’re in the middle of the room, that everyone can see them and she’s not at her top-notch, straightlaced, ship-shape best, just wraps an arm around Isabel’s shoulders and leans into her, rises on her toes and tilts her head up—

The first try is—well, it’s _bad,_ they’re both a little tipsy and they bump noses, clack teeth together, and Renée trips when the beat of the song changes and so does the sway of the hips against hers. But the next try is an exhale, a puzzle piece slotting into place; Renée cups her cheek and kisses her like they’re not in a bar, like this isn’t chance or fleeting or just some good old-fashioned calm before the storm that is Paris, that is NASA, that is the call of space like music curling from in between the stars. She draws away only enough to be lured right back into her orbit, this magnetic girl with the force of gravity at the core of her, with hands on her hips and a grin that Renée can taste.

Isabel pulls away eventually, worrying Renée’s bottom lip between her teeth as she goes and smirks. “Buy me dinner first,” she murmurs as they press closer, cheek to cheek, and Renée’s laughter rolls through them both.

They’re just two strangers in the bright lights now, and for once, _finally,_ Renée Minkowski _doesn’t care._ She curls a hand into Isabel’s _(“Call me Lovelace,” she murmurs in her ear later, and Renée doesn’t even pretend to be shy)_ hair as the music changes to something louder, harder, faster. It’s the same beat as her pulse in her ears, as the one under her lips when Lovelace tilts her head back, so she presses them to Lovelace’s neck and chases that rhythm across her skin like the stars themselves are showing her the way.

 

“This was,” Renée tells Lovelace emphatically as they lean against the side of the building, waiting for Renée’s cab to pull up, “the best night I’ve ever had.” The sad thing is that she means it, when she really thinks about it, that all her hard work and buckling down and goddamn persistence later, a random night in a random bar with a random stranger who kissed her like she mattered is what she thinks is the best—but no, no, she’s not doing this now. The air is crisp and the stars are out and there are arms around her waist and a chin resting on her shoulder and _this_ is what she’s going to focus on.

“My name’s Isabel,” she tells her again a while later, now that they're finally beyond the crush of bodies and pulse of music, after they’ve stood in silence for a long, long time. She sounds more sure of it this time, and she murmurs it against Renée’s neck as she leans close. “Isabel Lovelace.”

Renée hums something in response that could loosely be interpreted as “I know,” pleasantly light between the chill of the air and the press of a body against her back. Her flight leaves in less than eight hours. Eight hours from now, she’ll be on a plane headed for the rest of her life. She hums again, turns her head to bump cheeks with Lovelace, and laughs.

Lovelace laughs too, wraps her arms tighter around Renée’s waist before spinning her out and with the stars spread out in a canopy above them, it feels a lot like flying. “You’ll remember it, right?” she teases, eyes bright and voice charming, when Renée twirls back into her. “Best night you’ve ever had, you _better_ remember me.”

“Of course,” Renée tells her as headlights appear around the corner, as the cab pulls up to take her away. “Of course.”

She’s surprised to find she even means it.

 

_“My name is Captain Isabel Lovelace. I am the navigations specialist and commanding officer of the U.S.S. Hephaestus Station. Nine hundred and forty-four days ago, I arrived at this station with a crew of five men and women under my command. Supposedly, we were on a deep space survey mission. They told us that we were studying the star's unique radiation signatures, and looking for signs of extraterrestrial life._

_Those were all lies.”_

 

“New from the whackjobs that brought you the Empty Man? I'm just saying—”

“No—Lovelace. I've heard that name somewhere.”


End file.
